100 Aircraft Wings Only?

[The Dee]

After the Blood Alone Patch dropped (which I pre-ordered) I thought this would be awesome and it is.
Lots of 'new stuff', changed mechanics and so on plus the re-vamped Italian focus-tree.
Lovely :-)

The new 'Air Rework', having your wings organised into Air-Groups is a good idea, similar to the Armies and Fleets.

However....
It seems that you can only field Air Wings of 100 aircraft and you have no control over how many aircraft are in the Air Wings, you MUST have 100 it seems.
This makes the strategic use of your aircraft very limited.
Although having a default of 100 aircraft per wing may make it 'easier' to manage it makes the use of aircraft, especially limited amounts of aircraft incredibly difficult to use in the strategic sense for some nations.

Example;
Playing as the UK I like to have Naval bombers stationed in a few key places like SW England, Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore etc to cover these Naval choke points but I cannot now as I MUST have ALL of my initially limited Naval Bombers stationed in one place.
You start with around 40-odd Naval bombers and I can only have them ALL in one place.
If I split this Air Wing in half (around 20 each) then they BOTH must be 100 in size and all the Naval aircraft production will slowly fill these up to 100 and I will have none in reserve for replacements and new deployments.

I don't need 100 Naval bombers in Gib AND Cornwall and everywhere else.
SOME in Cyprus, some in Gib, some in Yemen and so on will do. (30 here, 50 there etc)

Unless I am missing something and you CAN control the amount in each Air Wing will there be a patch addressing this?... as it seems this is not very well thought through and playing as the UK you require aircraft in multiple places around the world at once and not all concentrated in one place as suits Germany, Russia etc.

Any advice, help would be appreciated.

'Si vis pacem para bellum'.
;-)

[Thalassa]

i WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THIS BECAUSE I'VE THE SAME ISUE

[Včelí medvídek]

Best advise is - get used to it.

The whole system was rebalanced, starting with IC cost (eg. transports now cost like 9x less) and it is much cleaner and easier for use.

[TigerRus]

Airwarfare is a mess. Doesnt matter how many. Whether you have higher Speed, Attack, Defence or agility its virtually impossible to shoot down enough aircraft from bombing your cities to oblivion. Just spent 4 hours upgrading etc. makes no difference at all

[The Dee]

Originally posted by TigerRus:

Airwarfare is a mess. Doesnt matter how many. Whether you have higher Speed, Attack, Defence or agility its virtually impossible to shoot down enough aircraft from bombing your cities to oblivion. Just spent 4 hours upgrading etc. makes no difference at all

For me it's the rigid default of 100 Aircraft per wing you can't change.
That's the main 'operational' and 'strategic' problem that comes with this.
"All your eggs in one basket", so to speak. ;-)

As for the problem of stopping enemy bombing, I haven't noticed exactly what you described... yet?
However, I have noticed that the AI enemy will suddenly plop 500 fighters and 700 bombers on your home region )or wherever) for a few days.
When I respond by putting up more fighters and interceptors to counter them, they just go away then repeat this process in another region and on it goes.
It can be quite annoying! ;-)

[The Dee]

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

Best advise is - get used to it.

The whole system was rebalanced, starting with IC cost (eg. transports now cost like 9x less) and it is much cleaner and easier for use.

I like that you can have air-groups now.
You can have say a 'Luftflotte' with a mixture of Fighters, CAS and Bombers organised together, similar to how the Luftwaffe did historically and similar to how the game structures the Armies and Fleets.
Having ALL air wings be 100 Aircraft strong with no option to change this is a bit problematic though. (See my post above)

You could set the size of the air wings BEFORE this DLC and update so I don't see why they can't just re-adopt that at least.
This won't effect the air group or anything else, just the amount of aircraft in each wing.

That's my thoughts anyway.

What did you mean by 'easier for use'?

Thanks for your reply.

D

[Big [REDACTED] Marty]

this change is not only kinda wack, it also nerfed nav bombers, as wings of 100 are very unlikely to sink ships, just damage them, even with max nav attack

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by The Dee:

What did you mean by 'easier for use'?

Thanks for your reply.

D

Can quickly deploy aircraft by classification by single button without need go through stockpile, multiple wings to thousands in few seconds as well, do not need adjust size to 100 (which was always optimal and I always did), can move/reassign whole airgroups easily, interception rework allows block access to air through zones like Channel and not need cover all regions where AI just teleports out of nowhere just to switch another when I attend it...

Yep, I see new system as much easier to use.

[Shortpower]

Similar to how battalions need exactly a number of guns, planes need exactly a number of planes.

Standardizing it makes balance easier I think.

[Shad1902]

good thing I waited for the DLC to come out...sounds like a "no buy" for me :(

[Winter]

Originally posted by The Dee:

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

Best advise is - get used to it.
What did you mean by 'easier for use'?
D

Nothing "easier" here is at all. Stupid "standartization". But we love this game for variousity. Wing with 100 planes I suppose it is sh*t.

[Exarch_Alpha]

So to sum it up the new DLC is sh*t?

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by demo1970:

Nothing "easier" here is at all. Stupid "standartization". But we love this game for variousity. Wing with 100 planes I suppose it is sh*t.

Nothing wrong with standarization and I named couple of reason why the system is now much better.

The real question is why someone want suboptimal wing size?

Basically you want smaller or larger wings - Smaller either he can not afford wing sizes 100 and again here - whole system was rebalanced, including IC cost. Also smaller wing has higher loses so need spend more on replenishment, you can now save a lot of production by making multiroles aircrafts, etc. Really no reason to complain without proper breakdown and evaluate all inputs.
Second reason for small air wings was exploit ACE bonus for wing size 10 (or even smaller, I recall calculation even claiming 2-3 wing size is the best). So basically this was fixed and balanced as this was not intended

Second is opposite - he want bigger wing size than 100 - combat wise this is inferior choice. There was never any difference between 10x100 or 1x1000 - beside ACE bonus that was always caped at 100 size, hence bonus form ACE to 1000 wing size was effectively reduced to 10% compared to wings per 100. So only reason I remotely see is the player control - if I will ignore the troubles with fiting airport, it is just about use air groups now, so no change.

Actually most people always used sizes of 100 since like forever because of ACE bonuses, now we just dont have the hassle of necessity to play with the sizes anymore.

[Shad1902]

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

Originally posted by demo1970:

Nothing "easier" here is at all. Stupid "standartization". But we love this game for variousity. Wing with 100 planes I suppose it is sh*t.

Nothing wrong with standarization and I named couple of reason why the system is now much better.

The real question is why someone want suboptimal wing size?

Basically you want smaller or larger wings - Smaller either he can not afford wing sizes 100 and again here - whole system was rebalanced, including IC cost. Also smaller wing has higher loses so need spend more on replenishment, you can now save a lot of production by making multiroles aircrafts, etc. Really no reason to complain without proper breakdown and evaluate all inputs.
Second reason for small air wings was exploit ACE bonus for wing size 10 (or even smaller, I recall calculation even claiming 2-3 wing size is the best). So basically this was fixed and balanced as this was not intended

Second is opposite - he want bigger wing size than 100 - combat wise this is inferior choice. There was never any difference between 10x100 or 1x1000 - beside ACE bonus that was always caped at 100 size, hence bonus form ACE to 1000 wing size was effectively reduced to 10% compared to wings per 100. So only reason I remotely see is the player control - if I will ignore the troubles with fiting airport, it is just about use air groups now, so no change.

Actually most people always used sizes of 100 since like forever because of ACE bonuses, now we just dont have the hassle of necessity to play with the sizes anymore.

yes...but actually no...

smaller wing sizes makes sense for smaller nations.... As columbia, I don't need wing sizes of 100 planes....

It's also not historical at all. A German Geschwader consisted of about 140-150 fighter planes.

A USAAF bombardment group of B-29 had 45 planes, while a B-17 group had 72 planes and a A-26 group had 96 planes, while a fighter group had around 125 planes.

so...long story short: this makes no sense from a roleplay / historical standpoint, additionally to the gameplay standpoint.

[Shortpower]

You also don't have multiple air regions to fight over so the one wing of however many planes does the job?

If it didn't you could always split the airwing in two and have two groups of not 100.

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by Shad1902:

yes...but actually no...

smaller wing sizes makes sense for smaller nations.... As columbia, I don't need wing sizes of 100 planes....

It's also not historical at all. A German Geschwader consisted of about 140-150 fighter planes.

A USAAF bombardment group of B-29 had 45 planes, while a B-17 group had 72 planes and a A-26 group had 96 planes, while a fighter group had around 125 planes.

so...long story short: this makes no sense from a roleplay / historical standpoint, additionally to the gameplay standpoint.

Game was never historical or roleplay as air powers never met in thousands but always were in the game, also the tresholds like 100 for ACE cap (hence peak efficiency) were set in the game from beginning too.

Only thing that make sense to compare old and new system and I adressed that - did you comapred some real numbers? Fact with interception rework you dont need cover all zones but for example only the one through enemy has to pass? That you can save months of retention penalty by design mutirole aircarft? etc. The thing someone has old habits does not mean it is good Idea to still apply them with whole system rework or that he is in any way in worse situation than before (like most people say they dont need 100 size transports, ignoring the IC price went down to 20 from 185 or something....)